BREAKING NEWS – Menlo Park, California – A nonprofit advocacy group says a researcher’s avatar was raped in the metaverse.
A researcher entered the metaverse wanting to study users’ behavior on Meta’s social-networking platform Horizon World. But within an hour after she donned her Oculus virtual-reality headset, she says, her avatar was raped in the virtual space.
According to SumOfUs’ account, users invited the researcher to a private party on Horizon World earlier this month. Users in the same room then asked her to disable a setting that prevented others from getting within 4 feet of her.
The report linked to a video that the group says shows what happened to the researcher’s avatar from her perspective. In the video, a male avatar is seen getting very close to her, while another male avatar stands nearby, watching. A bottle of what appears to be alcohol is then passed between the two avatars, per the 28-second video. Two male voices are heard making lewd comments in the video.
In a part of the video SumOfUs opted not to share but describe, the researcher “was led into a private room at a party where she was raped by a user while another user in the room watched and passed around a vodka bottle,” per the report.
SumOfUs said she then called 911, and alleged that the operator didn’t seem to care and accused her of making a prank call. She said the police was only a little more interested, and stated that they didn’t have the authority or technology to interrogate an intoxicated avatar, but they did offer to send her a virtual rape kit.